re: SaintsReport post on modified hand-written documents(Posted by SaintEB on 10/10/12 at 11:35 am to SlowFlowPro)

My last post was said, sort of, in jest, but I do find it difficult to believe that the NFL would go through such measures to falsify a document and not cover their tracks. I'm thinking they didn't falsify it, but it just doesn't match up to what they have been saying all along.

To Slo, if they (witnesses) did, in fact, create these from memory and this does go to court, then how admissible is it as hearsay, if the other witness that is supposedly corroborating it, has a different account of what happened? Can it just fall into "well, they are mostly the same" or do the testimonies have to match absolutely?

re: SaintsReport post on modified hand-written documents(Posted by kclsufan on 10/10/12 at 11:36 am to Eighteen)

quote: we meed Slo or another attourney to weigh in on the use of digital documents in court

Superchuck500 on SR is a N.O. attorney and has been money on the whole bounty thing from the get-go. He's definitely their go-to guy on all things bounty. I don't think he posts here, but would love it if he did. Maybe we should recruit him.

re: SaintsReport post on modified hand-written documents(Posted by TigerinATL on 10/10/12 at 11:53 am to SaintEB)

quote:I do find it difficult to believe that the NFL would go through such measures to falsify a document and not cover their tracks

I don't. Their view is that the CBA gives them 100% authority in this matter so none of this evidence would ever be scrutinized by the courts. Also, this may seem like a "rookie mistake", but you'd probably need to be both an expert in graphics programs and legal issues to even consider the consequences of saving a layered illustrator file as a PDF. Some guy in the graphics department was probably told to touch up the note and send it to them as a PDF.

I'm only moderately familiar with PDFs, but what someone else already posted sounds correct to me, if this was a scan the PDF would be "flat" and certainly would have multiple layers that just happen to appear to be text manipulation.

re: SaintsReport post on modified hand-written documents(Posted by Farva on 10/10/12 at 1:41 pm to SlowFlowPro)

quote:well i'm sure they'd request both copies in discovery and that's wehre the battle/potential sanctions would come out

I guess that's my biggest hang-up over whether there would be "sanctions."

If alteration of the documents occurred prior to a court proceeding (say, for instance, during the investigation in 2010), it would likely be subject to a spoliation-type motion than true "sanctions," as envisioned by many on this board.